


There is Not a Thing of Fate

by Colerate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First chapter is the shortest, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-13 10:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colerate/pseuds/Colerate
Summary: He'd move on if he could. Somehow he knows that when the play button was clicked, everything should have run in a smooth chronological order before coming to a rough close, final words, final credits. But it never gets that far, scrubbing back and forth between events as though the timeline couldn't, wouldn't be read.By pure happenstance, Peter gets sent back to the day after he got bit. This changes some things.





	1. It's a lot of things

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen like two fics so far that send Peter back in time so like... in my usual fashion... I gotta hop on that because that ish is fire.
> 
> Also in my usual fashion, I had to be extra and send him WAY BACK and come up with a very different plot from the others. Or at least I hope it's very different. We're in for a long one boys, I have a plan.
> 
> EDIT: Been told it's confusing and I totally get that, so just bear in mind while reading this that _the other_ is not a character you know. More on that in the notes at the end.

It's a lot of things, but it's also nothing much at all. 

It's the impression of a silhouette of a cut out of a form. It's a faded playback scratching on repeat, flickering to and throw with predictable spontaneity. It's the static feedback on Ben's knackered radio, the rolling lines on the old family TV. The distant clinking of pots, the car siren down the road. So close that it resonates within, yet so far removed.

It's the shuttering view of a New York City skyline, smeared by adrenalin highs and swinging motions. A bleary gaze at a curl framed smirk and muffled sarcasm. Watching the assembling of a lego death star manned by an irreplaceable figure. Colours, red and blue, presented by a proud man dressed in Canali. It's snap snap snap, shuffling through a playlist of broken moments, bits and pieces. The disk is scratched and all the downloads are faulty. 

At some point, some place, he becomes aware that he's not the only one in the audience. But it's all buffers and rewinds and he can't bring himself to care.

_”It's not quite right, is it?”_

_The question is vague, it could hold a thousand meanings and double the interpretations. Yet the message is clear, unspoken, in between the lines. There are a hundred and one things that are not quite right, no, more than that. But the voice is understood and the message is direct. It doesn't even require a response._

Gunshots and bleed outs interlaced with ruffled hairs and hard-earned sandwiches. Sometimes the man is dying, sometimes he's smiling. There are snippets of “responsibility” and “with” and “great”. It's an especially uncomfortable thing to witness while knowing that _no, it's not supposed to go that way. Once he's gone, he can't come back._ It's jumping.

_”Why don't you leave?”_

The showing finally moves on and there's a different man now. He's disproving looks, lectures and neglect until he flips over to proud smiles, phone calls and laughter. Someone must have changed the channel. 

_”I'm stuck” He eventually says... or thinks, or conveys, or- just generally communicates. There's no speech here._

_It's an honest answer, he'd move on if he could. Somehow he knows that when the play button was clicked, everything should have run in a smooth chronological order before coming to a rough close, final words, final credits. But it never gets that far, scrubbing back and forth between events as though the timeline couldn't, wouldn't be read._

A woman, she's frightfully scary when she needs to be but is arguably a little too laid back for the most part. A pungent smell of burning and a subsequent order of takeout. Then unchecked swears in the face of discovery and back to Chinese, or is it pizza? It keeps switching between the two.

_”You are” The voice confirms, coming to the same conclusion. Obvious really. “It happens, every now and again, I'll never truly know why...” The voice pauses, thinking maybe, he can't be sure. There's no face to read. No visuals, no audible ticks or clues. Just him, the Other and the misplaced scenes. “It's quite random”_

Everything is tall, wound back far this time. There's a push of chunky glasses and hand-me-downs that are a little too big. Sharp, sanitary smells that pierce the lungs accompanied by blinding clinical whites. The sight is blurry but it's not because of the glasses. He doesn't remember this one, yet at the same time, he does. Previously tarnished by time and trauma but now polished and clear. He'd rather it weren't if he's perfectly honest.

_The Other sighs, done with his musings. “First, I have a question. Then I have some advice” The sentence sounds like it has been said before but it's hardly rehearsed. “Forwards or backwards?”_

_“Backwards” It's so simple and straightforward, the question was unnecessary. He gets the feeling the Other knew this but might have held out on some form of hope. Or delusion._

_“Advice then, take it well. There is not a thing of fate, but coincidences and accidents can create the illusion”_

_He feels like saying it's not really advice if there was no actual advising involved but he gets the gist of what the Other is trying to say and decides to keep the comment at bay. “Thanks”_

_The Other leaves._

There is a change. The settings become almost indecipherable, flipping and clipping at a discernible pace. Soon there is all but a shifting current of colour and sound, invoking a similar rush within him. It's faster, faster, faster, faster, rising, it won't stop. It's drowning in his lungs, it's palpitations in his heart, it's crashing waves, falling buildings, delicate feelings, collapsing stars, angered shouts, mass confusion, exploding moons and everyone-turning-to-dust-onebyoneand.I.don't.feel.so.

Good. Comfortable. Droopy eyes, a warm cover and dirty washing on the desk chair. There's more, so much more, but he's tired and now it's time to sleep. There's only one important thing to remember anyway.

It's home.


	2. It's Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's decided he's not going to think too hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long.
> 
> I've hacked down on the plot details up until a certain point that should get me through quite a lot of chapters. 
> 
> This is kind of sad and angsty? It gets better after this, kinda. It will get happy after a small while. 
> 
> Ideally, the chapter length is gonna just get longer from here, just a heads up. (We'll see)

It's warm.

When his thoughts start to tick, a fuzzy feeling envelops him like a blanket. A comfortable, cosy blanket. It's then that he realises that it is, in fact, a blanket. He's wrapped up in a blanket. There's a bed too. It's nice.

He's about to drift back to sleep when it kicks in. 

Sound. He feels as though somebody set the speakers to max right next to his eardrums and left them on overnight, playing every utterance, dog bark, cat meow, hoover scuffle, car exhaust, traffic signal – every damn thing capable of emitting even a slight vibration – on full blast. He has about five seconds of coherent thought to think as much before his brain is scrambled beyond comprehension, just like the eggs sizzling two doors down. 

There's a small positive to it, that being when the rest of his senses crop up, he fails to even process the half of them. Bright light glaring straight through his scrunched eyelids, sweatpants sticking to his legs, the trademark New York Smog drifting in from the window, the stinging at the base of his neck. It's a lot - he can't think straight - but it's not everything.

He thinks he's starting to calm down when he feels hands on his arms and the cover being ripped away, exposing his sweat-laden skin to the prickly air. He guesses he must have made a noise and worried his aunt. Did he cry out? Scream? Or was it a mix of a small whimper and her sixth sense she swears she doesn't have? But it doesn't _feel_ like Aunt May but there's too much _to_ feel. He wouldn't know if Mr Stark shot him with a repulsor in this state and he certainly couldn't identify anyone by the callouses on their hands. 

So he tears his eyelids apart, steeling himself against the harsh fluorescent light above his head, only to find it blocked by a figure he hadn't seen in over two years. 

His senses stall for a second, muted, as his eyes zone in on the man blocking the light. He's saying something and Peter isn't moving which he knows is stressing the man out if the exaggerated creases on his brow are anything to go by. But all Peter can do is stare, motionless, taking in his features and meshing them into one big impossibility beginning with the letter B. Wispy, greying hair, only half gelled, framing a face which wasn't young but never grew old enough either. And, Oh God, the kindest eyes he'd ever known that could shift to disappointed in two seconds flat. But they weren't kind nor disappointed as they stared down; they were tainted with worry that grew with each moment Peter let go in silence.

“-ter, Peter, are you okay?” The man moved to crane his neck towards the ajar door, keeping a solid grip on Peter's shoulders. He followed his gaze and distantly noted that the walls were white, not the painted blue he had grown used to. “May? May come in here, something's wrong with Peter!”

The background noise and general environment began to buzz back into place, but not before he could pick out the hurried clicking of Aunt May's shoes and the swish of her nurse uniform as she hurried into the room. He noted idly that his feet don't quite reach the edge of the bed before trying to find something to anchor onto, to lift himself from the dreadfully familiar sensory overload. He'd not had one like this for a while and he had been hoping he wouldn't for even longer. 

“...May” He croaked after achieving some semblance of regulation. The effect is almost immediate, both May and... the other halt their panicked conversation. He's pretty sure it had something to do with hospitals, whether it was about May's work or his condition, he didn't know. He'd rather not go to the hospital though, for a multitude of reasons. “I don't feel so good”

He cringes. The bile is burning up his throat before he even realises he's feeling queasy. At some point, while he was out of it, May had gotten a pan just for the occasion. Bless May and her definitely-not-sixth-sense. 

After he's done heaving his insides, he swipes his mouth with his thumb and makes a point of not thinking too hard because his own brand of sixth sense is telling him that there's a revelation around the corner that he's just not ready for at 6:00 AM. Instead, he slumps back in what could barely be considered a seated position and deals with the panic he'd caused for Aunt May.

… and Uncle Ben. 

His heart clenches, but he's not thinking too hard about that right now.

“I'm alright... I just don't feel too-” He catches himself. “well...” He wracks his brain, looking for a distraction when he realises, for the second time that morning, that May is in her nurse uniform. “aren't you late for work?” 

“Oh Petey,” She takes his face into her palm. “You looked like you were in a catatonic state a minute ago and just threw up and you're worried about my shift?” The look in her eyes is worried, but it's different from Ben's. It's a split between concern for his health and exasperation at what he can only guess is the fact that he seems to lack that same concern. He doesn't look at Ben to see if he mirrors her now that he's up and speaking. He probably does, he always did. 

“May, I'm fine, honestly, there's a bug going around school-”

“It's the holidays, Pete” Ben speaks but Peter still doesn't look. Instead, he tries to wrap his brain around _when_ he is, oddly feeling like he's just dropped into a Back to The Future film, minus the cool car and flux capacitor. He's scratching absent-mindedly at the back of his head when he feels it – a bump. It takes everything in him not to flinch at the pain when he brushes over it. He's found his excuse.

“Sorry, I meant the Oscorp- er, the tour you know? Like half of the guides were coughing and one had to leave early” It slips from his tongue with a worked ease. It's not even that smooth of a lie but it's a lot more than what he was capable before the whole Spiderman thing which... seems to have not happened yet. Again, thinking too hard. 

Weird, possibly devastating time situation aside, it does the trick.

“Alright, well, are you sure you don't want either of us to stay?” Aunt May asks. Peter knows they can't, not really, but they would if he asked.

“No, I'm good, I'll just stay inside” 

“I guess one more day of that couldn't do you no harm, hey?” Ben chuckles and pats his arm. When he looks at the man for the first time since his senses calmed down, he doesn't know what to feel. So he doesn't. Ben waves a hand, gesturing at his half gelled hair. “I'm just gonna finish up this mess, then I'll be off, you can have my pot noodle if you don't feel well enough to make something proper”. 

After a little fussing and a few goodbyes, Peter is left alone with his spiking senses, time-related confusion and omnipresent dread surrounding something hanging off the very edges of his memories.

He decides sleeping is the best course of action.

Like with most of his decisions since, well, forever really, it was a bad choice.  


* * *

At 10:32 AM, he wakes. By 3:02 PM there's a crumpled list written in shaky handwriting held in an equally shaky hand.

 **Things I know**  
. I'm not ill  
. I can't control my senses  
. My neck hurts  
. My neck is bitten  
. It's August 2nd  
. I'm 14  
. I should be 17  
. I should be ~~dead~~  
. Uncle Ben

At 3:34 PM, he vomits for the third time that day, or at least, he tries. There wasn't anything in his stomach to begin with and there _honestly shouldn't be anyway because I'm not supposed to be **here.**_

He finally puts down the list with a weak hand, tucking it beneath his bed. God forbid Aunt May found it, she'd think him crazy and Uncle Ben... He doesn't know. He grips his ears with a bruising strength as his senses peak for the umpteenth time that day. He had never missed his early spider bite days and sending him there in what he first presumed to be some distorted afterlife seemed more like a hellish treatment than something that would come from Heaven. 

He resigned himself to the fact that he was not going to be doing much more for the day other than lying down with scrunched up eyes, trying his damned best not to relive those awful, awful scenes. 

He needed a plan, but he couldn't plan under these conditions. He just had to ride it out. 

God, he's exhausted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo yeah. Haven't read the comments from last chapter because I'm scared but I will now.
> 
>  **Question for any American Readers!**  
>  Has been solved! It was about the school system. 
> 
> **The plot!**  
>  So, it's gonna be a long one. After the initial angst, we gonna have some fluff before ish goes down with Tony Stark. I also plan on introducing some other characters, eg. Harry Osborn (although Ned, May, MJ and all of our OG dudes are still SUPER important to my plot). I could include more too, the plot is malleable and I can add extra scenes, so lemme know if there's anyone you'd like to see.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter needs a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much quicker at updating this time :P

On August 3rd, he's ready. Sort of. 

“As ready as I ever will be” He tells Aunt May, who's sat at the other end of the bed, her brows furrowed. It's quite early, the morning sun peaks through the curtains, highlighting the glossy posters that decorate his walls. It's oddly reminiscent of a generic Asian shrine he'd seen a picture of once, with the gentle rays revealing the dust as it danced in and out of view. Mostly, the images depicted the Avengers in 'heroic' poses that practically radiated physical prowess. Iron Man is a lot more frequent than the others, _although Thor is definitely a close second_ , he surmises upon spying the blond and strong cluster in one corner. Quite a few of them are printed; he vaguely recalls trawling through google images with an oddly in-depth selection system of his own creation. 

He took most of them down at sixteen, finding it a bit weird since he sort of knew them. He didn't feel weird when he found Ned's collection of bootleg spiderman spreads but he's pretty sure that's a bit different.

“Peter, are you listening?”

He blinks a few times to reign in his attention. Right, Aunt May. Feeling ill, but not really but yes really. Yeah. “er, sorry, headache again, I think I have a migraine?” Uncertainty actually worked well in some lies, he'd found. He also knew to dash in a grain of truth, although that was common knowledge, he had just failed to apply it up until a year ago. Or two years from now. Whatever. 

“Okay, well there's paracetamol in the cupboard-” Not going to work “- and your sunglasses are in one of these messy drawers somewhere, honestly I don't know how you find anything” He doesn't either. But the sunglasses idea? Golden. 

She gets up, dusting herself off as she does. “I'm going to go now, are you sure you'll be okay?” The look she gives him is the kind most people reserve for puppies and maybe a particularly clumsy dog. It makes sense, up until what must have been a couple days ago for her, he was fragile and weak. But the look is almost foreign to him now.

“Thanks May, yeah, I'll be good” He assures before proceeding to yawn. She gets the message but... there's something on her face that he can't quite decipher. 

“Okay, love you!” She calls as she turns to leave. Not long after, the front door shuts closed and he lets out what he's pretty sure is the longest sigh he's sighed, like, ever. And he's had a pretty sigh-worthy life, what with the freak lab accident, jumping around in a red and blue hoodie, hitting stuff, spinning webs for the aesthetic – because, let's face it, his spider-sense doesn't really have a hand in the design decisions. That was totally on him. Listing off sigh-able things in an attempt to distract himself from an inevitable meltdown is pretty sigh-able too.

What were the five stages of grief again? There was something about pretending things didn't happen in there. 

(He knows that he knows that the first stage in grief is denial – MattPatt's Link theory taught him that – but now he has an excuse to look it up on his phone and distract himself _even further_ )

“Oh cool, anger next, sounds fun”

He fidgets with the phone for a while and makes an unnecessary effort of re-remembering all the functions of a Moto G5. Then he checks all of the apps, individually. His social media is pretty interesting – he has 22 followers and he's pretty sure only 3 of them actually liked him IRL – and it's not too hard to get lost in the explore feeds. He's acclimatising himself with the times. Or that's his excuse anyway. 

He's spamming the refresh function on his personal Instagram feed when something pops up that causes him to fling the phone straight into the wall opposite him with an audible _crack_.

Tremors creep down his arms in small waves and all he can do is stare straight ahead, focusing on nothing, because the stupid phone screen has photo-bleached his retinas so all he can see is that awful face when closes his eyes. But it's not an awful face. On the contrary, it's one of his favourite faces and it's only logical it would be there. 

Why wouldn't he follow Official_Tony_Stark? 

_”You're okay”_

He's really not. Unless hands-scrunched-up-in-your-hair-swaying-back-and-forth counts as okay. 

Shallow fervent breaths leave him in a flurry and distantly he knows that he can't do this again, he was doing so well today and there are things to do. Plans to plan. Methods to, er, method. But there's a darkness creeping in the corners of his vision – Haha, Vision, wonder what he's up to – and what is visible is starting to swim in salty liquid. Thoughts are becoming nonsensical _what the hell about Vision then was funny?_ and suddenly the blanket is too tight so he's on the floor _when did I do that?_ and he's level with his notebook, pages splayed out to show his scrawling ink from yesterday so he reads, tries to read, tries to read until the blurry characters make sense. Once he can make out letters, they become words which become sentences and now he's reading a step by step plan of avoiding Flash on the first day of high school. Huh. In retrospect, it's a pretty crappy plan. No wonder it didn't work out. 

Sub-standard Anti-Flash guide aside, he's fairly certain he's not hyperventilating anymore. Mostly. His breathing pattern could do with a little constructive criticism. 

Reaching out for the guide, he resolves that today will be Plan Day in which he will make Two Plans. **Plan: What the Hell do I do with My 14-Year-Old Self Now** and **Plan: How to Avoid Flash on the First Day of High school 2.0.** Not necessarily in that order. 

A few hours later, he's hunched over his Tech Desk (it's his only desk but Tech Desk sounded cooler at 14 and old habits die hard) reviewing two plans (God, how many times can he repeat the word “plan”?) of varying importance and depth. Surprisingly, its the less important one that's the best thought out. He's now got back-ups for eleven different Flash orientated scenarios based both on his personal experience from last time and a WikiHow Article titled “How to Avoid Bullies” with pictures that suspiciously resembled him. Coincidence? I think – yeah, he's a total stereotype and he's fully aware. At least now he can ditch the glasses again, even though Ned swears he made them work. 

As for the plan that was imperative for his continued existence in three years, it was mostly a jumble of questions such as the likes of “How the hell do I contact Mr Stark?”, “Who the hell is Dr Strange?” and “Ben?”. The last one is circled so many times he's not even sure it would be legible if he didn't know what it said beforehand. 

It's easier to face the fact that Ben died. It'll never not hurt but he's had time to deal with that and he learnt that, no, you shouldn't throw yourself into swinging punches and spinning web instead of facing your feelings. Because it all builds up and before you realise it, Mr Stark has flown halfway across the city with a “come on, Peter, money might not buy happiness but it's much nicer to cry on a Duresta couch than wet gravel” and calls a cab for a low profile drive back to base followed by a cup of hot chocolate. Or maybe that's just Peter. Definitely just him. 

He forces his brain to move along before he's spiralling again. The point, he reminds himself, was that he's allowed to focus on Ben. And he needs to because he can't keep blaming the headaches for his weird interactions and stilled motions with the man and he kind of needs to fix things this time. Screw vague memories of person(?)-who-sent-thou-backeth, there's got to be some kind of reason for him of all people to be put back to this specific moment. It just clicks into place so perfectly, he's got all of the pieces and he just needs to step back to admire the jigsaw. He just can't yet and he needs to find out what's stopping him. In the meantime, he's going to save Uncle Ben and live life the way it should be: Peter, May and Ben Parker. One complete and happy family.

He picks up a pen to start what will hopefully be the final rendition of the plan for the day. First Ben. Second, he'll find Dr Strange's real name and hopefully find the magician connected to it. Third, he'll establish communication with Mr Stark. Fourth, he'll do the whole Spiderman thing again. Fifth, he'll deal with Toomes pretty much as soon as he rears his ugly wings onto the scene. Sixth, he'll find a permanent way to stop all of these ticks he's picked up seemingly overnight. The last step is more of a side project born out of an annoyance at his newly chewed up nails and shaky handwriting. He's scouring his semi-fried brain for anything else he might need to add to what could arguably be the most important to-do list of all time but is interrupted before any more progress is made. 

Click goes the front door lock and slam goes the notebook cover. Uncle Ben is home. 

The sentence feels wrong in his head.

There's a shuffling of feet, a hanging of a jacket and what sounds like poking around in the fridge and _oh crap I'm kind of ravenously hungry._

“Pete, did you even eat today?” Ben hits the nail on the head and consequently drives the dread already pooling in Peter up his stomach lining. 

“I forgot” He doesn't think he needs super hearing to pick up the tutting Ben makes before clanking around the kitchen to make Peter something. Ben's food is much better than May's when it comes to actually being edible but it's not the food part that Peter's organs are in a twist about. In fact, he'd more than happily accept anything to ease his accidentally postponed and long since overdue hunger pains. It's the Ben part and he hates himself for it, no matter how much he rationalises the feeling. 

It smells good, whatever it is. He guesses Lasagne from the warm-somehow-dewy scent that creeps up to his room. With  
a little deliberation and a side of hesitation, he slumps out of his desk chair and treks down the creaky stair. Once he enters the living room, he's greeted by the mouth-watering sight of a tray of lasagne and the cook himself who is already seated at one end of the table, knife and fork digging into his plate. Smiling meekly, Peter slides into the chair by his side (the one opposite was reserved for Aunt May) and helped himself to his own portion.

A rather uncomfortable silence ensues, filled only by the clinking of plates (for Ben) and the shuffling of other people in the building (for Peter).

“Something on your mind, Pete?”

It's an abrupt but expected break to the quiet yet Peter's throat is still dry despite the fact that he's on his second glass of water, ready to pour a third. To be fair, the glasses were quite small.

“I don't think so?” He feigns ignorance.

Ben reaches for the salt, even though Peter is pretty sure he's topped up his meal with enough salt to double his recommended daily intake. A nervous tick perhaps? It's a stretch. “You usually have a lot more to say” 

“I'm just tired from this whole illness thing, that's all” Not entirely false. 

“Hmm” Ben doesn't respond with words, collecting up his dishes for the wash and putting away the remains of the tray for Aunt May. He turns the tap with a small squeak and Peter is left to ponder his reply.

It doesn't bode well but, at the same time, Peter could just be over thinking. Over analysing was kind of his thing, Mr Stark even said he was worse than him. Mr Stark, whose smile shone brightly as he presented his latest model of phone, later deciding to upload one of the pictures from that moment onto his Instagram. He was fine. Ben was fine. May was fine. Everything is fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally went a little off script with this one, was supposed to have more specifics regarding the Ben Plan but oh well. I wasn't too sure how to write Ben and I'm still not but hey we haven't really delved into him yet. 
> 
> Also, it's really nice to see you guys commenting! Especially those who commented on the first chapter and stuck around for the second, really appreciate that :D

**Author's Note:**

> I know I've got WIP BNHA fics and I did try to work on them but... IW has me wreaked and now I'm obsessed with Spiderman again and it's quite hard writing well on something else when I get obsessed with something. I can never be simultaneously multi-fandom, it's not in my nature. 
> 
> But I will return to them once IW and spiderman release their death grip on me.  
> \-----  
> If anyone was confused about what the voice is, dw about it. I needed some kind of means for Peter to get sent back that made sense and didn't want to go for Dr. Strange (I feel like Peter wouldn't be his first choice and it's not canon compliant, but that's just my outlook for this fic, not bashing on people who used that, they had pretty cool reasons for it). At first, I was gonna have some random ancient god or smth but couldn't easily find one to fit the bill. Who the voice is doesn't matter, but the idea behind it was that the Other sort of regulates the dead and makes sure everything goes smoothly. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Old Parker Luck.  
> \-----
> 
> Feel free to let me know what works and doesn't work, I wanna get bet better etc. and I'll try my best not to get defensive.


End file.
